Nigerian army chief denies his soldiers shot and killed anti-Sars protesters 

Nigerians have been protesting against police brutality

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Nigerian soldiers shot dead peaceful protesters at a demonstration in Lagos last month and carried away the bodies on trucks, witnesses told a judicial panel on Saturday.

Protests against police brutality turned bloody, witnesses said, when police fired upon demonstrators in the wealthy Lagos suburb of Lekki.

But in testimony a general in the Nigerian army denied the claims and insisted his men only fired blanks.

Dabiraoluwa Ayuku, one of the witnesses giving evidence to the court, said in her testimony that she had seen soldiers killing people.

"The soldiers kept shooting at random, and I saw people falling to the ground, injured or lifeless," Ms Ayuku said.

Her account was one of three submitted to the Lagos panel investigating the allegations.

General Taiwo denied that his soldiers opened fire on citizens

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Citizens have taken to the streets in Nigeria to demonstrate against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (Sars), a brutal police unit that has been accused of torture and extrajudicial killings.

Read more: Nigeria protests: How Lagos influencers triggered a global movement to end police brutality

The protests, the worst since the country’s return to civilian rule in 1999, climaxed in that incident on October 20, when human rights group Amnesty International said soldiers and police killed at least 12 protesters in two districts.

Both the army and police have denied killing demonstrators.

In testimony to the panel on Saturday, Brigadier General Ahmed Taiwo, who leads the army’s 81st Division in Lagos, said soldiers fired blank rounds only, into the air, to disperse protesters.

When shown a photo by the Reuters news agency which he used as testimony to prove the army fired only blanks, he said two bullets among the 11 shown were live rounds, one spent and one unspent. He said they did not belong to the army, but were perhaps from the police.

Police used tear gas to disperse protesters in Lagos and insisted they did not use live rounds

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"If we fired live rounds into that crowd, the casualties will have been too much," General Taiwo said. "So we made that judgement, and decided to use blank ammunition."

Two of the civilian panel witnesses said some troops fired into the air, but all three said other soldiers shot peaceful protesters, injuring or killing them.

"I remember a particular soldier that kept dancing while he shot," Ms Ayuku told the court.

Soldiers removed some protesters’ corpses in vans, said two witnesses, one adding that the troops took away bullet casings.

Later that night, police arrived and opened fire on protesters, two witnesses said. One said they saw police shoot dead two men.

Ms Ayuku said she returned the next morning to find blood stains and casings on the floor, while vultures hovered overhead.